Bash escape special characters in variable. you escape ^ in the same manner.

Bash escape special characters in variable. FYI I'm trying to implement this via bash script task in Azure DevOps pipeline. ) printed as literal escape sequences (eg. Try to echo "the above string" instead to see the difference. Bash contains features that appear in other popular shells, and some features that only appear in Bash. 0\. 7k 15 186 537 Strings in Bash Since a key does not represent each sign on a keyboard, writing and storing characters are two distinct processes. I was wondering, since two single quotes transform every special characters into normal characters, which include escape symbol \, but exclude itself, the ', how should I represent a single single quote ' in a single-quoted Example, First echo, name variable is expanded and interpreted as string and printed. Feb 22, 2017 · So to prevent bash from doing so, you need to enclose the variable name in braces {}, like as, echo "Hello_${i}_${j}" The braces prevent the variable name from spilling over and abutting with the _. The special character ‘ $ ’ symbolizes any defined variable in Bash. e. Feb 2, 2017 · As I could understand that the exclamation mark in the secret variable needs to be escaped. IE: VAR=ABcd Sep 27, 2024 · With heredoc, you can include special characters, variables, and even command substitutions without the need for excessive escaping. For the purposes of this question let's say I want t Mar 28, 2022 · 3 $ declare -px declare is a Bash builtin command that seems appropriate. Aug 9, 2009 · But this isn't perl. "'" is a valid single-quote string and '"' is a valid double-quote string without requiring any escaping. If a \newline pair appears, and the backslash itself is not quoted, the \newline is treated as a line continuation (that is, it is Apr 16, 2019 · This evaulates the password='*fdas_dfar+)mbn' line and assigned to the variable password the string '*fdas_dfar+)mbn'. The escape (\) preceding a character tells the shell to interpret that character literally. Mar 2, 2015 · echo 'It\'s Shell Programming' I tried this on my centos server, it doesn't work, a > prompts out to hint me type more. Aug 30, 2019 · How to escape special characters when echoing variable in Bash script? Asked 5 years, 8 months ago Modified 5 years, 8 months ago Viewed 2k times Aug 20, 2023 · What is the nature of the escape? In other words, what characters need to be escaped? Are you looking for a C++-style escape (where tabs are replaced by \t, newlines with \n, quotes with \", etc. /test. The following menu breaks the features up into categories, noting which features were inspired by other shells and which are specific to Bash. Jun 18, 2022 · This behaviour is never going to change in bash. ${BACKUP_ROOT@Q}, but I did not find an option so far to escape the backslash in the BACKUP_ROOT parameter. You used double quotes, and some characters ($"\`) are interpreted between double quotes. To prevent this from occurring and avoid having them expanded, use single quotes instead of double quotes: Feb 11, 2024 · Explore the article to learn how to escape string in bash and enhance your knowledge of preventing special meanings of characters. How do you escape double quotes in Ansible? As is mentioned in How to escape backslash and double quote in Ansible (script module) you need to surround the { { ids }} with ‘ ‘ in your shell command. Sep 21, 2014 · Learn how to escape special characters in shell script while using printf command in Linux. Aug 5, 2019 · Continue to help good content that is interesting, well-researched, and useful, rise to the top! To gain full voting privileges, Feb 23, 2021 · In addition to correct quoting when setting the variable, you should also, double-quote when you use the variable (e. This concise guide simplifies your scripting journey. Learn how to properly handle variable references and avoid common pitfalls in Shell programming. I found that there is actually a larger list of characters that must be escaped – particularly if you are trying to handle free form text. This command escapes special characters for the shell in existing variable assignments. May 3, 2024 · Is there anyway to solve this by any change inside shell script. This isn't the problem at all -- wildcards don't get expanded inside double-quotes either, so (other than removing the backslash) this is the same as what the question had. For example: prompt user input click and drag your file here /Users/lee Jan 22, 2024 · Escape characters are generally used to remove the special meaning of a single character. As issues of properly escaping “special” characters are going to be discussed, the choice of shell is very relevant. How do set a heredoc to either A) escape the variable names instead of parsing them or B) re Jan 11, 2018 · Outside of double quotes, \ is always special to bash: it preserves the literal string value of the following character. Backslash Character (\) Backslash character used to escape the characters in strings. If the replacement string happens to have characters that sed considers special, like Apr 28, 2024 · In Bash, regex is collection of characters to define a pattern which is used to match pattern, extract and validate text, etc. Another is to break out of the single quoted string and concatenate the string with "'" (a double quoted single quote) before continuing with the rest of the single quoted string, as in 'you'"'"'d Sep 24, 2022 · I know that the hyphen - has its own meaning in parameter expansion, so it's expected that, without some escaping or the like, it wouldn't work. 3. I have a string in a shell/bash script. From the man bash page, Enclosing characters in double quotes preserves the literal value of all characters within the quotes, with the exception of $, , \, and, when history expansion is enabled, !. See What is the significance of single and double quotes in environment variables? The example in your question happens to never use problematic characters, though. Dec 12, 2014 · How do I handle special characters like a bracket in a bash script? Ask Question Asked 10 years, 9 months ago Modified 3 years, 11 months ago Master the art of bash escape string techniques to handle special characters effortlessly. This variable should then be expanded into an ssh-command and transmitted to the server. P. sh ) on Linux or Mac The recommended The compose file has the variable declared like: - VAR=ABcd&123 I've searched high and low, updated docker framework and compose, and tried every combination of escape arguments and quote wrapping I could find and I still can't get this variable to pass through properly. I can store the variable with the character or special characters that it returns and use it without incident. Apr 26, 2025 · To escape special characters in bash, you can generally precede the character with a backslash (\). The second one translates uppercase characters to lowercase. These special characters include characters like ?, +, $, !, and [. The question does not have to be directly related to Linux and any language is fair game. In the first four cases, it preserves the literal string value of the following character. So if you want sed to see s/\(127\. One of the functions in the strings. so you need to do sth like Jun 24, 2006 · Hi, I need to export special characters into an environment variable. See Gilles, slillibri, and Dennis Williamson's answers for more relevant solutions. . Nov 6, 2023 · Escape special characters from variables [duplicate] Ask Question Asked 1 year, 10 months ago Modified 1 year, 10 months ago Jan 21, 2012 · Linux - Newbie This Linux forum is for members that are new to Linux. Also, a few of stylistic recommendations: $( ) is generally preferred over backticks for command substitution (it's easier to read, and doesn't have some weird escaping syntax oddities Aug 26, 2025 · Tip: Escaping characters via the command line can be complicated, to simplify any escaping requirements we recommend you consider using either environment variable or configuration files . Jul 15, 2020 · I am trying to read a password from stdin into a variable in a Bash script. Explore techniques for referencing Shell variables with special characters or ambiguous names. The \n and \r are included to preserve linux or windows style newlines, which I assume you want. Sep 29, 2023 · The dollar sign ($) is a special character in Bash and other Unix shells that expands to variable names or indicates the start of a parameter expansion. Sep 25, 2020 · @fluffeh, ah, hmm, I'll try to re-elaborate. The characters $ and retain their special meaning within double quotes. Mar 2, 2021 · Does this answer your question (especially the section on "Escaping a string literal for use as the replacement string in sed 's s/// command")? Nov 1, 2018 · 2) bash 's builtin commands accept -- as an option that instructs them to stop processing options and consider everything that follows as file-names and arguments. Learn how to extract the most out of it using some of its built-in special characters. somewhere I think @ is treated as special character in Jenkins due to which combination of quote and @ is ignoring quotes. I'd like to escape single and double quotes while running a command under a different user. So, -dc means delete all characters except those specified. Escape Character A non-quoted backslash \ is the Bash escape character. Side note: A character class in a sed search pattern allows an unescaped sed-delimiter inside a character class while bash does not. Apr 27, 2017 · Changing the outer quotes (and escaping any special characters that the shell now might be interested in interpreting) is one way to solve that. Second echo, $ prefixed escape character \, printed as literal string. As the line is parsed by bash, the quotes ' are removed, because expansion happens. Feb 28, 2012 · Part of the problem here is that the local and remote filenames are parsed differently: the local filename is used directly, so the only thing you need to do is enclose it in double-quotes (as in @Ignacio's answer), but the remote filename gets passed to a remote shell which runs it through another layer of parsing (quote and escape removal, etc). ll list entries echo '!1x9y377s' !1x9y377s According to the Bash Manual: 3. depending on the used options (like sed -r for more extended regex characters like {(?+), you need to escape more characters of course. net is good at spotting mistakes like this. Try it out! Whenever you pass a variable to a command, you should probably quote it. d means delete, c means complement (invert the character set). It preserves the literal value of the next character that follows, with the exception of newline. echo "$var" instead of just echo $var). it is used in double quoted strings. newlines, tabs, etc. This causes it to run date every time the prompt is printed, and the result to be printed as the In this lesson, we’ll dive into the crucial concepts of quoting and escaping. They let you do complex things like chaining commands, redirecting input and output, running commands in the background, and more, all with just a few keystrokes. Feb 15, 2018 · I tried bash escape and double quotes methods to escape the special characters in below shell command, But both didn't work, What is the proper way to escape special characters in ansible playbook? Jul 19, 2017 · However, sed allows to use almost any character as a separator instead of /, this is especially useful when one wants to substitute slash / itself, as in your case, so using for example semicolon ; as separator the command would become simpler: It's meant as a common location for variables that's shell independent. Feb 2, 2013 · linux path environment-variables escaping special-characters edited Jul 15, 2022 at 7:46 phuclv 42. org > Forums > Non-*NIX Forums > Programming [SOLVED] Passing variables which contain special characters to sed Programming This forum is for all programming questions. And as Steve B pointed out above, with his reference to the "gnu reference manual", you can't escape quotes in bash within the same type of quote. Jun 24, 2013 · Escaping characters in variables inside sed expression Asked 12 years, 2 months ago Modified 12 years, 2 months ago Viewed 18k times Jun 6, 2018 · You are big hunteke. Consequently, I have escaped the space with a \\ in my variable definition. There, the password should arriv May 13, 2014 · In C#, there is a verbatim string so that, string c = "hello \t world"; // hello world string d = @"hello \t world"; // hello \t world I am new to shell script, is there a similar method in shell? Because I have many folders with the name like "Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Activewear", I want to know if there is a easy way to process the escape characters without write so many . It's free and entirely browser-based. bash: put text into a variable without needing to escape characters Ask Question Asked 8 years, 6 months ago Modified 8 years, 6 months ago I'm having trouble with escaping characters in bash. But when i try to set password with special characters like $,",', \ etc. If a newline character appears immediately after the backslash, it marks the continuation of a line when it is longer that Discover the world of bash special characters and unlock powerful commands. Besides, parsing the output of ls is a very bad thing to do! Nov 1, 2023 · I understand the cause is that awk is interpreting the '&' character as metadata, rather than a literal character, and so it substitutes the name of the variable where the character is located. If you need to interpolate a shell variable Feb 13, 2019 · Bash won't evaluate the content of single-quoted strings. Is there any comprehensive list of characters that need to be escaped in Bash? Can it be checked just with sed? In particular, I was checking whether % needs to be escaped or not. Apr 26, 2025 · Special characters often need to be "escaped", or prefaced by a character that nullifies their special properties (typically the backslash \). By prefixing certain characters with a backslash () you can "escape" their default behavior and treat them literally. BTW, shellcheck. Here are some of the more common special characters uses: Apr 7, 2012 · I was also trying to escape characters in Bash, for transfer using JSON, when I came across this. It preserves the literal value of the next character that follows, removing any special meaning it has, with the exception of newline. You can define a Bash escape character by using a non-quoted backslash (\) that is enough to retain the literal value of the next characters followed by this except for the newline tasks. If I run PS1="$(date)" now, the date is called immediately, and PS1 is set to Sat Sep 26 10:36:34 EEST 2020 . sh $-123 without single quote. g. Please see this link about the XY problem. So that user can pass . Escape characters are used in Bash and other shells to remove the special meaning of characters that normally have a specific function. org > Forums > Non-*NIX Forums > Programming [SOLVED] How to escape bash-special character in a bash string? Programming This forum is for all programming questions. Thanks a lot friend. Jul 16, 2019 · I have the following situation: I'm storing sensitive data in Gitlab's environment and then passing these variables to a deployment script in bash. Jul 20, 2017 · I am trying to preserve special characters in my variables when setting them. Essentially, it tells the bash interpreter to treat the next character differently, preserving its literal value. 1 Escape Character ¶ A non-quoted backslash ‘ \ ’ is the Bash escape character. But I'd also expect that Bash should have mechanisms for escaping special characters in any context, including during parameter expansion, unless perhaps that's not the case here? Dec 3, 2016 · How to escape special characters in a variable to provide commandline arguments in bash Asked 8 years, 3 months ago Modified 8 years, 3 months ago Viewed 222 times May 29, 2010 · In my bash script, i am trying to execute following Linux command: sed -i "/$data_line/ d" $data_dir $data_line is entered by user and it may conatain special characters that could brake regex. A non-quoted backslash, \, is used as an escape character in Bash. Gitlab's env var: Key: sensitive_var Value: aaa Special characters Some characters are evaluated by Bash to have a non-literal meaning. They are: 1. This tells bash to interpret the next character literally. Strings are used in Bash to store text. S. I want to print the string with all its "special characters" (eg. As most of us know usually export foo="ABCD" can be used to store the Mar 6, 2012 · LinuxQuestions. Along with commands and keywords, special characters are building blocks of Bash scripts. I deleted perl -e print and the problem is gone. I found this SF Q&A titled: How does one properly escape a leading “#” character in linux etc/environment?. But what to do when you don’t want to perform any of the mentioned tasks? Escaping is the only solution in this regard that includes all the characters within a string as literal values. lib. Dec 12, 2013 · I've got a Bash script (Cygwin) that uses some Windows paths with spaces in them. See full list on baeldung. Jan 23, 2024 · Why Escaping Double Quotes in Bash? In Bash scripting, double quotes are generally used to expand variables, interpret commands and particular special characters, etc. Running the Bash script ( detect10. Actually, it is impossible in this way because shell will perform all this variable expansion, wildcard expansion, etc, before calling the script. It would be very helpful that you explain what your trying to achieve. This is a fundamental part of your journey in Unix/Linux Shell […] If you want to replace a keyword with a string using sed, sed tries hard to interpret your replacement string. The quoting operators (to remove the special meaning of those characters) also vary greatly between shells. But I'd also expect that Bash should have mechanisms for escaping special characters in any context, including during parameter expansion, unless perhaps that's not the case here? Dec 3, 2016 · How to escape special characters in a variable to provide commandline arguments in bash Asked 8 years, 3 months ago Modified 8 years, 3 months ago Viewed 222 times It is wiser to use the above since we are interested in substituting whatever is in that variable only as compared to double quoting the whole command which can cause your shell to interpet any character that might be considered a special shell character to the shell. The real problem is how c is used, not how it's defined. It's a special syntax for trivy to get the report generated in html from the template stored in contrib directory. Apr 26, 2025 · Bash is very powerful because of its special characters. Oct 19, 2018 · My question is how can I print all characters of a variable containing a string without considering escapes? When I use echo in bash like echo "\"" it only prints " while when I use echo '"\""' it prints it correctly. I am trying to save file paths as variables. None of these methods worked: Oct 11, 2023 · That sequence of strange symbols on the Bash command line must mean something, right? We're breaking down special characters and how to use them. May 23, 2022 · Escape special characters in BASH There are so many special characters, few of those commonly used include dollar sign ($), asterisk (*), exclamation mark (!), question mark (?) etc. See "I just assigned a variable, but echo $variable shows something else". its not accepting. 1. Characters which have a special meaning in Makefile and that need to be escaped are: sharp (#, comment) becomes \# dollar ($, begin of variable) becomes $$ Newlines cannot be inserted in a variable, but to avoid breaking the rest of the Makefile Jan 13, 2015 · when using the su command put the command itself in sigle quotes and just escape the $ with a backslash. you escape ^ in the same manner. com This tutorial will guide you through the process of properly escaping special characters when referencing shell variables, helping you write more reliable and robust Shell scripts. ($( ) creates a new quoting context, so you don't need to escape double quotes inside it at all in the first place; it's only backticks that have a problem there). The time now is 03:47 AM. Usually, they consist of single- or double-quoted, straight sequences. 5. I tried echo "h An escape character allows you to include special characters in a string or command that would otherwise be interpreted as a command or a variable. 2 Single Quotes Enclosing characters in single quotes (') preserves the literal value of each 9 All characters are interpreted literally between single quotes. That's literally the point, all of the special characters are interpreted as literal characters not for their special meaning. Escape Characters - A Bourne Shell Programming / Scripting Tutorial for learning about using the Unix shell. Just starting out and have a question? If it is not in the man pages or the how-to's this is the place! Mar 18, 2024 · In a shell, the most common way to escape special characters is to use a backslash before the characters. 1\. Feb 2, 2020 · How to escape a special character that is hidden inside variable in unix shell script Ask Question Asked 5 years ago Modified 5 years ago Nov 16, 2017 · The second problem is that variable references aren't expanded inside single-quotes; you need to use double-quotes (and escape the $ that's part of the regex). Jun 14, 2012 · Related: Echo newline in Bash prints literal \n (to the extend the sample string contains an exclamation mark), How can I pass an argument with an exclamation mark on Linux?, and How can I escape history expansion exclamation mark ! inside a double quoted string?. 1\)\s/\1/ put single quotes around it and the shell won't touch the parentheses or backslashes in it. sh What makes a character special? If it has a meaning beyond its literal meaning, a meta-meaning, then we refer to it as a special character. I'd advise you to stop fighting and accept that quoting variables is the right thing to do when programming bash. Unless you want to interpolate a shell variable into the sed expression, use single quotes for the whole expression because they cause everything between them to be interpreted as-is, including backslashes. The general syntax for using heredoc in Bash is as follows: May 14, 2020 · Their are two ways to approach this. If you want to use the literal value of a special character in a script, you would need to escape it. Some of the shells that Bash has borrowed concepts from are the Bourne Shell (sh), the Korn Shell (ksh), and the C-shell (csh and its successor, tcsh). sh file will take a string that contain characters that need to be escaped, and then modify the string to contain the escape characters so that when you apply the variable elsewhere, it will not break. Proper use of escape characters is crucial for constructing robust bash scripts and commands. These characters look simple but have unique functions that can make a Bash script much more powerful. But I could not find any documentation on the how to escape ! mark in the secret variable or for other special characters. What's even more annoying is that just declaring the variable and echoing it in bash with an escape works fine. Jul 14, 2024 · Characters within double quotes are interpreted, meaning that $, ``, and ` can be used to insert variables, execute commands, or escape special characters. Mastering these techniques is essential for writing effective and reliable shell scripts. So, let’s explore! Jun 21, 2012 · LinuxQuestions. When you type the command directly into the command line, the escape character is not the result of a previous expansion, so Bash removes it before sending it to the echo command, but in the second example, the "\ " was the result of a previous parameter expansion, so it is not removed. 3. Given this it doesn't look like it supports strings with hash marks (#) in them and there doesn't appear to be a way to escape them. For example Jan 23, 2024 · Escape quotes are the special tools in Bash for ensuring the correct handling of single quotes, double quotes, and special characters of various forms. Mar 18, 2024 · In conclusion, it’s usually best to use double quotes for passwords in variables and single quotes for passwords as standalone strings, avoiding the need to escape many characters. the placeholder variables has to set in command bash context (here after su). They allow you to control how the shell interprets special characters and variables, ensuring your commands behave as intended. Escaping Escaping is a method of quoting single characters. Find examples for escape characters, single and double quotes. So if Dec 6, 2017 · How can I either pass the password to the expect script so that it sends the literal characters and not give them special meaning? I don't think I can script a "fix" for the password file itself, meaning go in and every time it sees a special character, escape it out via sed or other means as the escape character itself is special and could end May 29, 2024 · In Gitlab, need to pass a variable containing special character "$" to another stage via artifacts. 2. If it's unacceptable to you, then you need to pick a different language. a newline is printed as \n, Need help with escaping special characters for lineinfile I'm trying to do the following to simply change the bash prompt - name: Editing bashrc to change bash prompt lineinfile: path: /etc/b Mar 2, 2021 · How to escape characters in a shell script variable [duplicate] Asked 4 years, 3 months ago Modified 4 years, 3 months ago Viewed 2k times Aug 17, 2021 · Now as * is a special character in unix it doesnot work in further operations (like sed,grep) until I put an escape character infront of every * 1 Bash uses single quotes (') to avoid any special characters or the backslash (\) to escape a single character: MY_VARIABLE='$foo' echo "$MY_VARIABLE" This will output $foo as will: echo '\$foo' All times are GMT -5. The first tr deletes special characters. That's the string that then prints as prompt every time. Escape characters Escape characters are used to remove the special meaning from a single character. Inside of quotes, the backslash \ is only special when followed by one of five characters: $, `, ", \, or a newline. Everything within the script works fine. Each of the shell metacharacters has special meaning to the shell and must be quoted if it is to represent itself. What makes a character special? If it has a meaning beyond its literal meaning, a meta-meaning, then we refer to it as a special character. May 10, 2017 · I'm working with a bash script trying to stop it from attempting to replace variables inside my heredoc. It is how shell works - parses command line, and then executes it, so the script will receive already expanded value. Escape Character (Bash Reference Manual)3. test. In this article, I’ll explain how you can employ escape quotes in Bash diversely to handle a wide range of data interpretation and create error-free scripts. I do not have the list of special characters that can be escaped with \ but one can empirically conjecture and verify at the command line Nov 5, 2022 · I found the bash extension that would allow adding single-quotes, i. Aug 6, 2013 · in expect script I can set any command or character to run it on remote machine but the sad thing is that expect cant send the same character as they defined in the expect script for example I wa Sep 21, 2023 · Properly escape a string variable that contains special characters to be used in a shell script? Ask Question Asked 1 year, 11 months ago Modified 1 year, 11 months ago Jul 31, 2025 · The directory contrib does not start with @. With certain commands and utilities, such as echo and sed, escaping a character may have the opposite effect - it can toggle on a special meaning for that character. Instead, these characters carry out a special instruction, or have an alternate meaning; they are called "special characters", or "meta-characters". In some shells like bash or yash, special characters like blank token delimiters also vary with the locale. Sep 2, 2025 · Learn about quoting difference between Bash, PowerShell, and Cmd. Reading the content of a variable from stdin and then using the variable as an argument to the command is another workaround, but won't always work since the content of variables may be evaluated, too. Dec 21, 2019 · One of the hurdles is if you want to use any of bash special characters like @ or ! in your shell command, or, if you want to double escaping it from the original shell command. Another option would be to escape the string for bash when using double-quoted strings. The Makefiles in this post specify bash explicitly using the SHELL variable, but the same rules should apply for all similar sh -like shells. If you’re working with a string of text, placing it in single quotes (‘) will also escape all the special characters it contains. )? It is hard to help without the problem being well-defined. Value provided in pipeline variable: test$123*'>"pl Any help would be really Okay, it turned out that Makefiles need little escaping for itself, but the commands which are executed by the shell interpreter need to be escaped. Have you ever needed to print a dollar sign, quote, or other special character in your Bash scripts? Escape characters allow you to do this by removing the special meaning from characters that normally have predefined meanings in Bash. Aug 6, 2013 · in expect script I can set any command or character to run it on remote machine but the sad thing is that expect cant send the same character as they defined in the expect script for example I wa Sep 21, 2023 · Properly escape a string variable that contains special characters to be used in a shell script? Ask Question Asked 1 year, 11 months ago Modified 1 year, 11 months ago Escaping characters in bash alias [duplicate] Asked 8 years, 5 months ago Modified 6 years, 11 months ago Viewed 16k times Mar 18, 2024 · In conclusion, it’s usually best to use double quotes for passwords in variables and single quotes for passwords as standalone strings, avoiding the need to escape many characters. And in fact, don't need to escape them within alternate quotes, e. Escape just 4 possible special characters in your variable As pointed out here (despite the question falling victim to the SE aversion to general questions), there are just 4 characters considered special in the replacement part of the sed s command: \, &, newline and the delimiter (usually / but can actually be anything). Indeed, all variables in Bash are essentially character strings. However, if I run PS1="\$(date)", date isn't run yet, but PS1 gets set to $(date) . Example: May 26, 2025 · Hi, I'm trying to set password in pipeline variable and use that variable for encoding it in base64 format before uploading to key vault. According to the berkley docs: "The ! may be preceded by a \ to prevent its special meaning" But, if you don't want to go escaping, use a single quote around the password. E. You can also prevent the execution of Jul 3, 2015 · Bash script and escaping special characters in password Ask Question Asked 10 years, 2 months ago Modified 10 years, 1 month ago Jun 9, 2023 · GNU Bash is a powerful command interpreter for Linux. May 29, 2010 · In my bash script, i am trying to execute following Linux command: sed -i "/$data_line/ d" $data_dir $data_line is entered by user and it may conatain special characters that could brake regex. It seems you're taking the wrong path when putting compound commands in a variable there's probably a much more robust, safer, cleaner and easier way to achieve your goal. This guide reveals their roles and enhances your scripting skills. My workspace and everything is fine. Jun 17, 2016 · Continue to help good content that is interesting, well-researched, and useful, rise to the top! To gain full voting privileges, Mar 23, 2024 · Discover the importance of escaping single quotes in Bash and explore various methods, examples, and best practices to avoid syntax errors and unexpected behavior. Mastering escape characters is key for controlling how Bash interprets your strings and commands. Aug 15, 2018 · I have a bash script which read an input file and using a heredoc to ssh to a server using expect, but am having issue escaping some special character in the input file. Although it might not be useful as a regex, some character sequences may be interpreted as Bash variable names. Triple quotes have no special meaning in bash: two of the quotes cancel each other out, leaving only the third; making the behavior 100% identical to just using only one quote. This utility escapes all special shell characters in a string. pwqreb rct oji ywfw lvkeh jxrl cnop btiw ohkjt mxjph